Nurturing regenerative relationships between people and nature, using permaculture as a pattern for conscious living.

October Permaculture Design Course

NEXT COURSE DATES: Dates for our October 2018 Course to be held in Noordhoek will be released in 2018.

Why attend a Permaculture Course?

Empower yourself and learn how to become self-sufficient in any situation. The Permaculture Design Course teaches essential skills to meet the challenges of a world beset with climate change, economic meltdown, and diminishing natural resources. Learn to design regenerative human living environments that will provide for your every need in a way that benefits everything and everyone around you… A Permaculture Design Course will change your life and set you on a pathway towards health, abundance, personal freedom and economic well-being without compromising the earth or your ethics.

The Permaculture Design Course is the international standard for entry into the world of permaculture. Because Permaculture is a design system, having a working grasp of the design process is critical to successful application of permaculture in one’s life. The Permaculture Design Course specifically focuses on design by practically exploring the ethics, principles, and methodology that underpin permaculture design.

The process is dynamic and fluid and mimics the processes and patterns found in the structure of nature. By applying the design process and toolbox to any situation an elegant, appropriate and integrated living system that self-perpetuates will emerge. We as humans cannot separate ourselves from our environment and permaculture design concentrates this reality.

The Permaculture Design Certificate Course

The Permaculture Design Course was developed by Bill Mollison to teach principles and foundations of sustainable design. All PDC courses offered throughout the world must follow the same format to assure that the integrity of certification process is upheld.

Certification

Permaculture Education Africa’s PDC follows the original certification course developed by Bill Mollison and David Holmgren plus includes layers of process and content that are appropriate to the African context. Our courses meets all the requirements for certification. Participants that attend all sessions of this class and complete the final design project will receive Certificate of Permaculture Design.

Venue

Love Green Urban Permaculture Project in Noordhoek

Outdoor classroom at Love Green Permaculture Noordhoek.

Permaculture Education Africa’s courses are now been held in a variety of venues depending on the time of year. We are now holding one in Noordhoek each year in April.

The Love Green Urban Permaculture site is a typical suburban context that Tahir and Larissa have been retrofitting since 2010. The property is off the grid and has its own electricity and water supply nested in an urban food forest that is now starting to produce. There is still much to be done before all niches in the system are filled and the system reaches maturity but at this stage, it is a thriving and diverse system with a range of interesting elements and systems that can be transferred into any permaculture context.

The site will be the base for the course and will host some of the practical sessions, specifically around vertical and container gardening, cold frames and other micro strategies that are needing implementation on the site.

Food Forest at the course site in NoordhoekKitchen Garden

We will also be working at a select urban site in the area. This site is a relatively blank canvas for us to design and implement an urban food forest and vegetable production system. This will be the site of much of our practical work and we will also be traveling around the city to explore other effective applications of permaculture design in the urban context.

Permaculture is the conscious design of human living environments that are reflections of the ecological principle that underlies nature. It is the harmonious integration of landscape and people providing their food, energy, shelter and other material and non-material needs in a regenerative way. Permaculture design is a system of assembling conceptual, material, and strategic components in a pattern which functions to benefit life in all its forms.

“A design is a marriage of landscape, people and skills in the context of regional society”. (Bill Mollison)

The process of permaculture design spirals through every aspect of the human endeavour

Without regenerative resource management, there is no possibility of a regenerative human culture. Regenerative human cultural and economic systems are built on the regenerative resource base which makes available renewable natural capital as the core and energy source for society.

THE ETHICAL FOUNDATION OF PERMACULTURE

Permaculture is a broad-based and holistic approach that has many applications to all aspects of life. At the heart of permaculture design and practice is a fundamental set of core values or ethic which remain constant whatever a person’s situation. These ethics are often summarized as;

CARE OF THE EARTH: Look after our planet and everything that lives on it.

CARE OF THE PEOPLE: Look after each other.

SURPLUS SHARE: Direct all surplus resources, time, and energy towards establishing to first two ethics in the world around us so that is may transform into a healthy, abundant and peaceful place for all.

PROMOTE LIFE: All forms of life have a right to exist. Our efforts as designers are directed towards enhancing and promoting life in all its wonderful and diverse forms.

COURSE OUTCOMES

The core of permaculture has always been in supplying a design toolkit for human habitation. This toolkit helps the designer to model a final design based on an observation of how ecosystems interact combined with human needs and vision. This results in understanding the natural pattern of place into which a design pattern is harmonised.

– The development of integrated systems thinking and design skills that can be applied to any situation in any part of the world. Permaculture designers will have a range of principles, ethics, and skills at their disposal that can be applied to the following:

– Design of urban homesteads, farms (small or large-scale), community-based natural resource management systems, sustainable community development programs, village, and city design (Ecovillage and Ecocity), integrated business planning and design, the design of integrated and appropriate social and legal system. It is an ideal tool for regional and local planning for NGO and government workers in all fields of sustainable development.

Development of integrated systems management and assessment tools to bring disparate and non-communicating elements of any environment together into organic processes that self-replicate and evolve.

Discover how to turn problems into solutions and become a solutions-based thinker.

During the course, each participant will get hands-on design practice by designing a site of your choice or you can design a site located at or near the training venue. If you are going to design a site of your own choice, such as your current home, you will have to bring along a scale map of the property you wish to design with contour lines, and a list of relevant data (see lower down on the page) so you will effectively interact with the design tools and processes within the context of your own life’. Designing happens as individuals or in small groups which provide essential training in working in teams and interactive group multitasking. We will run through the complete design process over the duration of the course and by the end of the course you will have completed a design and be well practiced in the permaculture design process. Effective knowledge of the design process is central to permaculture and the course process ensures practical experience in the following aspects of design…

Students practicing their design skills in the sandpit.

COURSE CURRICULUM STRUCTURE.

The curriculum we follow is based on the internationally accepted structure that is based on Bill Mollison’s Designers Manual. This means we cover all the broad themes in permaculture and thus the content is appropriate for any student whether you live in the city or country or in any climate context around the world. The details of the curriculum are specifically tailor made for each course context, depending on student needs and requirements.

The Nature of Water, Design of Regenerative Water Infrastructures, Earthworks, The Nature of Soils, Design of Regenerative Soil Management Systems, Design of Buildings according to Climate, Off-Grid Technology Systems Design, Trees & Perennial Plants in Design, Design of Plant & Animal Based Production Systems according to Scale, Climate and Zones, Design Strategies for an Alternative Nation, Decentralisation over Centralisation.

Major Design Project:

You will go through the entire process of design practically in the context of a design of your choice. This is the core outcome of the course process and you will complete a full permaculture design and present it. The design will take the form of maps, pictures, text, and models. Materials for the design will be provided.

Upon completion of the course, you will be provided with an internationally recognized Permaculture Design Certificate.

FACILITATORS

Kent Tahir Cooper, Alex Kruger, and Guests….

Tahir and Alex have been practicing permaculture for 20 years. They taught together for the first time in 1995 and have trained thousands of students over the years. Through their own respective journeys into permaculture they have designed a wide range of permaculture systems ranging from small-scale urban gardens, eco-villages, farms to regional level marginalised community action plans, established and managed community projects and non-governmental organisations, consulted on ecological restoration and land rehabilitation projects across the country and abroad. Alex and Tahir bring this vast experience into the PDC environment, delivering a high-quality transfer of knowledge, skills and intuitive understanding of permaculture producing high standard graduate designers.

Lead facilitators Alex and Tahir

COURSE CONTENT PROCESS

The course runs over 13 days. The learning process is based on Permaculture principles and makes use of a wide range of group-based and creative accelerated-learning methods.

We teach the various aspects of the course based on spiral learning, meaning we cover each subject in many ways, starting with theoretical and concept presentations followed by exploring each subject by interaction, research, observation of existing systems, tours, practical work, implementation of systems, design practice on many levels, collective group work, presentations by students, discussion, movies and audio visuals, guest presenters and much more….

We take you practically through the design process in the context of a Permaculture environment, which presents a diverse range of challenges and opportunities developing design skills, knowledge and experience set that can be applied anywhere.

By working in groups you will have the opportunity to cover material that is not possible through individual work and in the process of developing a real time design that will be implemented; you will also develop essential group working skills. Many of the techniques and methods used in implementing Permaculture systems will be covered in some detail, but the focus will be on the design process.

Student working on their major design project…

COSTS

This thirteen-day course costs will be updated in 2018 and bookings will open in May 2018, which includes the following…

Because space is at a premium in the training environments we will only be taking 18 participants.

Contact us to request your booking form for the course itself via email.

Your place is confirmed ONLY on receipt of your deposit. Your deposit covers the implementation costs of the course. Deposits are only refundable up to 17 March. If you cancel after this date and we are able to place someone else on the course to take your place we will refund your deposit. The course fills up quickly and generally a month before the course it is full and you will be put on a waiting list in case of cancellations.

Please contact us by email as this is most easily accessed by us on the farm as we have no phones in our homes or cell phone signal. If you cannot mail, please try the number below:

(023) 614 3024 (if you get the answering machine, please leave a message)